Facsimile (fax) machines are routinely used to transmit and receive paper documents. Communication by fax has become widely accepted as a fast, efficient alternative to delivery of paper documents, such as by mail or courier.
One drawback to conventional faxing is the requirement of dedicated telephone lines connecting a source fax machine to a destination fax machine. In addition when sending a fax across long distances, the sender typically pays a toll charge for use of a long-distance telephone line. Also, transmitting a large number of pages by fax may require that phone lines be dedicated solely to transmitting a fax for long periods of time, making the phone line unavailable for other uses such as regular phone calls or perhaps a short urgent fax. Although fax transmission as currently used has some drawbacks, the fax has become an integral part of doing business.
Another drawback to conventional faxing is a reliance on paper documents. A paper document is fed into the source fax machine, and a paper document is printed by the destination fax machine. Once the fax is printed by the destination fax machine, the paper document must be routed to the intended recipient. If the routing system has flaws, the intended recipient might not receive the paper document in a timely manner. If the intended recipient is busy and cannot review the fax immediately, the paper document may get misplaced or lost. If the intended recipient is absent or otherwise away from the fax machine, the fax may have to be redirected to the recipient""s temporary location resulting in additional cost.
Another drawback to conventional fax transmission is lack of a useful archiving method for a received fax at the destination location. Once the fax is printed by the destination fax machine, the data transmitted by the fax is typically not archived elsewhere, so that if the paper is lost at the destination, the entire transmission may have to be repeated, at additional cost.
Hence a need exists for an apparatus and method to overcome these and other drawbacks of fax transmission. It would be desirable for such an apparatus and method to be transparent to the user, to reduce telephone line cost, to provide means for redirecting the fax as necessary without incurring additional charges, and has an archiving method.
The above drawbacks in fax transmission are met by the present invention. A first objective met by the present invention is to provide an apparatus and method that reduces the telephone cost of fax transmissions.
A second objective met by the present invention is an apparatus and method that allows fax users to archive the contents of fax transmissions.
A third objective of the present invention is to provide an apparatus and method to remotely access a fax transmission. This objective is met by utilizing the apparatus and method of the present invention.
A fourth objective of the present invention is to provide an apparatus and method for connecting a fax machine to a global computer network, such as the internet.
The above objectives and others are met by providing a fax interface unit that couples to a conventional fax machine. Such a conventional fax machine will be referred to as a legacy fax machine or fax machines. The fax interface unit also connects to a computer network including a global computer network such as the internet, which provides a low-cost communication medium linking multiple computer and fax machines having the fax interface unit.